Competition
by Quarto
Summary: Sherlock doesn't know what it will take to keep Molly with him. When he finds out, the game is on. My entry in the "Fifty Reasons to Have Sherlolly Sex" meme: Number 33, "Keeping Up With The Neighbors."
1. Chapter 1

He hadn't lied when he'd said girlfriends weren't his area. When he ultimately reversed his stance on that topic, Sherlock therefore decided to really research how it ought to be done. After all, there's no point in doing anything unless you're going to be the best at it, boyfriending (ugh) included.

There was a lot of literature on the subject but it was written for (and about) idiots. Conducting the experiments himself, which would normally be the appropriate course of action in such a situation, was unviable. Successful psychosocial experimentation mostly required a control group… and when he considered what might happen if he were an _un_satisfactory romantic partner he suffered from chilled extremities and an unpleasant sensation of heaviness just below the sternum.

The solution came to him, as it often did, in the company of John. For someone of only adequate intelligence, the doctor was unbeatable as a _promoter_ of thought.

"John," Sherlock said, "You're very short and angry, and yet Mary seems quite happy with you. How did you manage that?"

Watson inhaled slowly through his nose, and replied levelly, "I am one inch shorter than the average British man-"

"Mmm, try three."

"_No._ And oddly enough most of the time when I'm angry you're in the same room and _talking_. It's not_ that _much of a stretch that I could make Mary happy. What's wrong with me?"

"The list is on my laptop, I'll email it to you when I get home. Clearly you've learnt the trick since my departure. You never managed to keep a woman for more than two months before."

John snorted, retrieved his coffee cup from the dashboard of the battered Ford Fiesta, and took a sip. "That's down to you, mate."

"What?"

"I'd dated Mary for nine months before you came back and she had to deal with you. She'd already gotten attached to me by that point."

"Sunk costs_ are_ a legitimate element of behavioral economics, but-"

"Look, this isn't about me and Mary. This is about you and Molly. And so I'm going to tell you the truth and that is that there's no trick to it. All you do in a relationship is to try not to be a complete arsehole all the time – in your case this might involve occasionally thinking things you don't say – and she tries to do the same and it sometimes works out."

"It never worked out for you before."

"Because that's the _point_ of dating. You have to see if your particular set of horrible personality flaws mesh with her set of horrible personality flaws. It's always going to fail, until it succeeds. Oh. Oh, hey, we've got a lookie-loo at ten o'clock."

Sherlock looked to the left, and saw a jittery teenager scanning the car-park. "Right," he said, "Let's catch a crocodile-smuggler."

* * *

><p>The Lab Notebook of Sherlock Holmes<p>

_Hypothesis: Mary is happy with John because he has a higher income than she does and is thus able to provide her with a superior standard of living. Financial insecurity is often a motive for offing one's husband; financial security, therefore, must be a desirable attribute for a man to have._

_Method: Apply scrutiny to Watson finances_

_Result: John provides approx. 2/3 of Watson family monetary support (point in favour). John could double current contribution should he be inclined to focus his energies on medicine rather than the pursuit of criminals (point against). Mary does not appear to be upset by this failure and actively encourages him to take cases with me (point against). Mary herself could produce 2x her current income by spending 1-2 months per annum engaged in professional espionage as repeatedly offered by Mycroft Holmes (point against). Also according to M.H., American security agencies pay much more to their off-the-books representatives than their UK counterparts, and so resuming her prior employment would enable a significant increase in income even over that (point against) _

_Conclusion: Mary's personal contentment does not involve money, at least not above the level of middle-class._

_Notes: Damn, this would have been a good one. A few more dull but lucrative "help me prove infidelity and invalidate my prenuptial agreement" cases would have easily let me surpass Molly's income, and I have half a dozen of them in my deleted emails folder at this moment._

_Hypothesis: Mary is happy with John because John donated the genetic material to produce a viable and appealing offspring._

_Method: Observe similar parental relationships among Londoners of their class and age._

_Result: The Watsons have a child (Melita) who is unusually charming compared to other children of her age and background. This child demonstrates no particular traits that are especially characteristic of John apart from blonde hair and blue eyes, both of which are also present in Mary. As these traits are recessive, Mary had motivation to choose a mate with John's phenotype in order to produce them (point in favour). _

_Other women appear to be equally attached to obviously inferior children (point against). Sentiment and biological imperative, once again, defeat reason._

_Conclusion: Indeterminate. Mary might have been equally happy with some other sprog by some other father. _

_Notes: This one is a possibility and to the best of my knowledge I could probably provide Molly with an acceptable child should she want one. _Mem: Find out the salient characteristics of a semen analysis and perform one next time you have the opportunity, as unqualified assumptions can lead to error_. Does Molly actually want a child? She seems to like them but has never bought up the topic despite her advancing age, and she's very rigorous about contraception. Is fatherhood actually something I could do, given that even the idea that I might have a child with Molly triggered my first _bona fide_ panic attack in twenty years? Why does this have to be so _**complicated**_?_

Sherlock slammed the notebook closed and drummed his fingers on the table in irritation.

As a general rule he _preferred_ having a narrow set of acquaintances, since it minimized the number of tedious social gatherings he was required to attend. But on occasions like this, where advice might have come in handy, it was frustrating to find out that all the people you knew were incompetent morons who couldn't manage a successful romantic relationship without the aid of horse tranquilizers and bribery. Even the Watsons had spent six of the first seven months of their marriage actively contemplating divorce.

Oddly enough, under other circumstances, Molly would have been the best one to approach for an answer to this. She'd had a respectable dating life and had been the one to end all of her relationships, so presumably she knew what she was doing. But she had terrible skills in _selecting_ a satisfactory partner, and he did not want to draw her attention to that fact, since he himself was no exception to the general rule.

He narrowed it down to men (since he himself was one) and members of long-term relationships (since that was the goal). And then he began his inquiries.

_Mike Stamford_

Mike Stamford, upon being asked "how do you make a woman happy with you" had replied, "The last thing I did that made her happy was getting a vasectomy. Get a vasectomy. Everyone should."

Upon more in-depth examination, Stamford's wife was both unusually fecund and unusually prone to multiple births. Thus they had produced a set of twins and a set of triplets in the space of two years, and had five children in diapers at the time Sherlock inquired of him. While this justified Stamford's haunted eyes and three-stone weight loss, it hardly seemed applicable to his own particular situation. Oddly, despite his panic attack at the thought of potential fatherhood, the hypothetical elimination of the chance made him feel… sad? Possibly?

Something to examine later.

_George Lestrade_

Lestrade sighed and lit another Silk Cut when he was asked about keeping a woman happy.

"You can't take them for granted, Sherlock," he said, drawing in smoke. "If you do, there's always someone out there who won't. You have to let them know that you value them or they'll just… slip away."

This seemed like valid advice from a man whose twenty-year marriage had been ended by adultery, and so the next time he saw Molly, he said, "You are the most skillful pathologist I've ever encountered and your work is extremely useful."

At that point they were surrounded by MI-5 agents, so Molly just smiled and continued her description of the corpse and the manner of death.

But it seemed to work, so he set up a randomizer app on his phone to remind him to remind her of her own merits.

_Father_

Siger Holmes must have had some useful knowledge about women, given that he had managed to live with Sherlock's mother (who was one) for almost fifty years without either of them becoming what most people would consider insane. Sherlock had meant to ask him, he truly had. He'd taken the old man to the British Museum and bought him a sandwich in the café, and Siger had even said, "Is everything going well with your young lady?" which was an _ideal_ opening…

And then he had a legitimate flashback of himself aged thirteen, spotty and agitated, being sat down in Siger's tobacco-fugged study for "the talk".

He just couldn't face another iteration of that excruciating event. Being beaten with a pipe in a Serbian prison had nothing on being obliged to hear his father talk about sex, love, and relationships. Sherlock had simply replied, "Very well," and they'd gone for a look at the Mildenhall treasure.

_Philip Anderson_

Asking Anderson was an act of sheer desperation. But the man had managed to pull Sally Donovan while still married to someone else _and _looking like a water rat, so he presumably had some sort of insight.

Anderson flushed, pleasedly, and it occurred to Sherlock that he'd never previously asked for or wanted the man's opinion about any subject.

"I suppose," he said, after some consideration, "That what they really want is for you to respect them. To know that you think of them as a person and an equal instead of some sort of… lifestyle accessory, I guess?"

Sherlock stared at him in dismay. Yes, obviously sexism was a legitimate problem and given her race and career choice Donovan was subject to more than her fair share of it. Anderson probably had a point there. It was just that his point was utterly pointless in his own situation. Despite what everyone believed, Sherlock Holmes was well aware of his numerous and fascinating issues, but casual misogyny was not one of them. Instead, his misogyny, misandry, and general misanthropy were always intentional and purposeful. Women _en masse _were at least as intelligent as men (so not very), their malignities equally explainable and generally far more justified.

If anything, _he_ was Molly's lifestyle accessory, not the other way 'round. She was far nearer to being a functional human being than he was.

Two bloody weeks he'd been at this and he'd learnt nothing that would be of any real use to him in keeping Molly happy. He was absolutely and completely _fucked._


	2. Chapter 2

The adult Watsons arrived at 221B very early in the morning, John in order to accompany him on a case, Mary to drop them both off at Heathrow. Sherlock invited (well, told) them to make coffee and climbed into the shower. Washed, shaved, and dressed, he emerged from the bathroom and walked into the kitchen to find John and Mary looking suspiciously casual.

John cleared his throat, and said, "Didn't take you as long as usual, did it?"

In fact Sherlock _had_ recently bought a new argan oil pomade, which produced a light, flexible, long-lasting hold when he applied it to towel dried hair and _scrunched_. This had taken twenty minutes off his morning routine, and so Sherlock was very pleased with it. But John wouldn't appreciate or know what to do with this information, and so his remark was clearly intended as deflection.

Mary, as always, was tricky to read, but she was flushed and her normally tidy hair was mussed. John was about as opaque as window-glass and so was ineffectually attempting to conceal a pink smear on his neck, which corresponded perfectly to Mary's lipstick, and, of course, the dust… Ugh. Sometimes deducing was _so_ unpleasant.

"You two are _not_ allowed to try to have sex in my flat."

"We weren't!" John protested.

"Oh, so that isn't the print of Mary's bum on _my_ table. Where I _eat_. It's _disgusting_."

Mary looked where he was pointing, turned her head to peek at the back of her trousers, then wrinkled her nose and started to brush dust off her arse. "Really, Sherlock, this place is a tip. You _can_ just pay people to come in and clean for you, you know. Anyway, how is this the first time it's come up? You two used to live together."

"He took them elsewhere," Sherlock replied promptly, "Though it was rarely an issue. You'll have noticed he can't really pull that well."

"Oi!" John said, indignantly, "I pulled loads. Women love me. Er… loved me, sorry, Mary. But, yeah, we mostly would go to theirs."

Sherlock fired off a text, and a moment later, Mrs. Hudson's voice echoed faintly up the staircase, "I'm not bleaching your table, dear. If you want it done you can hire an _actual housekeeper_!"

John hrumphed, but Mary just chuckled and said, "I'll actually miss this while you two are away. Shall we get going? We can probably miss the worst of the traffic if we leave now."

A few hours later, he sat in the first-class cabin of a Lufthansa flight bound for Paris (this was a Mycroft case, so he'd absolutely declined to fly economy, and was planning to make his expenses ludicrous and memorable). Then a thought occurred to him.

"John?"

"Mm?" replied Watson from behind his paper.

"You said you _mostly_ took your dates to their own flats."

"Ye-ess?"

"Meaning _sometimes_ you didn't."

"Uh huh," John replied, with ineffable smugness.

"How?"

"Oh, he doesn't like it when one of the dull people gets something past him, does he?" John said, "It wasn't _that _difficult. As long as they came and went when you weren't in the main area all we had to do was be quiet."

John, as usual, was wrong. It had been far easier for people to sneak about the flat when they were sharing; the dust situation had been under much better control back then and the fact that he'd missed some signs of temporary occupants wasn't that upsetting at all. It was the simple fact of the concealment that intrigued him.

_-Item: John was embarrassed at being caught _para flagrante_. _

_-Item: Mary was not, though she never is. She may have heard of modesty and shyness but has certainly never bothered to try either. I saw far more of her breasts than I cared to while she was nursing._

_-Item: And yet Mary was flushed when I interrupted their actions. Excluding embarrassment and anger, the likeliest cause of this was physiological arousal. Thus, she had been enjoying the inappropriate behaviour and the risk of being caught._

_-Ergo: Given John historically preferred to conceal his sex life from me, for which I am entirely grateful, the contamination of my kitchen is an example of something in he did in order to make __her__ happy._

_-Interesting._

He had to put a pin in it for the next two-and-a-half weeks. The case was _important_, as were all Mycroft cases, but also _fun_, which was much less usual. A matter of stolen Soviet weapons-grade plutonium, two dead Brazilian intelligence officers wearing lead masks in a field outside Giverny, and ultimately being flung into a tank filled with venomous lizards. Sherlock barely avoided becoming a _Chevalier Legion d'honneur _for solving that one, and received a highly complementary letter referring to his work as a "_coup de maître_" from Mme. Ballestrazzi at Interpol.

When he returned to London, he found Molly in a closet-sized room in Bart's labyrinthine basement, loading a sample into the environmental scanning electron microscope. She closed the stage, switched on the roughing pump, and turned around to see him standing in the doorway.

"Sherlock!" she squeaked, and hugged him with her surprising strength, "Why didn't you let me know you were coming back today?"

Shit. That _was_ probably one of the things a good boyfriend would have done. At least she didn't seem upset when she pulled his head down for a kiss, which tasted perfectly and sweetly of _Molly_… and where the _hell_ had that thought come from? The kiss tasted of artificial cherry lip balm and coffee, which flavor profile was enjoyable but hardly distinctive. But it was enough to remind him of his plan, and certainly this seemed like an opportune moment.

Resting his hands with all due care on her hips, he nudged her gently backwards until her bum was against the wheeled cabinet that supported the scope. Then, breaking their kiss, he trailed his lips ever so lightly along the clean line of her jaw… not kissing, really. _Brushing_, because she liked that. He did too, he had to admit. Molly had an exquisite skin: peach-soft, fair, and spattered lightly with freckles in the areas that saw sunlight. It was probably his favorite bit of her, although he had to give points to her hair. And hands. And, well, the breasts. But skin definitely was in his top five and he thought, once he reached that ticklish spot just below her ear, that he'd like to see more of it.

When he undid the tiny top button on her demure blouse and applied his lips to the triangle of skin this revealed, Molly noticed what he was up to. "Mmm… Sherlock? Someone might see us," she murmured.

"Possibly," he replied, though it was really very unlikely, which is why he'd seized this opportunity. The microscope was antiquated and low-resolution and Molly only used it because there was never anyone else wanting time on it. "Shall I stop?"

"Umm-" she hesitated. Sherlock dropped his voice down a third and said, sternly, "Hooper. Shall. I. Stop?"

With each word he undid an additional button, covering the newly exposed skin with kisses. The fourth button revealed a violet bra and the tops of her superb breasts (which were maybe his favorite after all). But Molly rested a hand on his chest and said, simply, "Not here."

Sherlock stopped what he was doing, of course. He did consider himself to be a gentleman, and even if not, a great deal of his hellish teenaged talk with Siger had dealt with the fact that anything other than "Ooh, yes, _please_," counted as "No." But then Molly, her eyes wide, tightened her grip on his shirt, pointed behind him and said, "Over there."

He looked where she was pointing; a bare lab bench approximately a meter behind him. He raised an eyebrow, and Molly hastened to explain, "The ESEM's on wheels, Sherlock. I don't want to damage the instrument."

And there was a new data point: Molly was _not_ prudish. She was, instead, extremely careful with expensive equipment. He smiled, wolfishly, since that suited him very well. He divested her of her practical brown trousers, spun her around, boosted her onto the countertop, and sank to his knees before her. And, oh, there she was, ten centimeters in front of his face, and really, there was nothing for it: after this, he was going to have to sit down and really get to grips with the order of that list of his favorites, this time _not_ omitting her scent. Unlike the lip balm it _was _distinctive, and it was _intoxicating_. But just at the moment all he did was run a finger over the seam of her labia where he could faintly see them through her knickers, and say, "You know, I believe you may have missed me."

Molly laughed, and said, "I believe I may have. Now, as you were?"

That counted as "Ooh, yes, _please_," and so he obliged, burying his face in the fabric and surrounding himself with Molly Hooper.

* * *

><p><em>Success<em>, Sherlock thought, when he left Molly, sated and content, to look at her samples. He even did a quick heel turn and ten steps of the moonwalk down the hallway of Bart's, ignoring the presence of Molly's wide-eyed foundation year doctor. He'd terrorized the man into submission months ago, and nobody would believe him anyway.

He was irritated that it hadn't occurred to him before. Yes, money did cause a great many murders but sex was nearly as bad, and unlike money, sex did play a significant part in his relationship with Molly. Also unlike money which could only be used to buy _things_, there was an almost infinite selection of sexual options that he could use to keep her happy with him. It was time, once again, for a _literature review_. There was slightly less material about sex than there was about feelings, but even skimming the surface provided him with a wide range of options. But unfortunately, when he began reading, he found himself troubled.

Sherlock Holmes disdained the concept of "instincts," possibly because he'd never been able to use his own in any useful way. He preferred a rational approach in which an aware mind could fairly evaluate and select from multiple options. Yet, his long-neglected instincts told him that the popular advice about how to please a woman was just… bad. The idea of dipping his cock into Nutella before Molly fellated him, for example, seemed ridiculous. And the statement "women don't like it if you try to have anal sex with them without asking first" seemed so patently obvious that he couldn't believe that it had to be printed in a popular men's magazine.

So he bought a half-dozen of the female equivalents of his magazines and surveyed their sex tips columns. He was gratified to learn that, for once, his instincts had been correct. The people who wrote these sort of things _were_ idiots, and quite possibly had undiagnosed eating disorders. The thing with the Nutella and the famous "grapefruit technique" couldn't be justified otherwise. Certainly Sherlock was grateful that Molly had never slapped a handful of crushed ice onto the small of his back at the moment of orgasm (which hint been printed under the heading "surprise him" with three exclamation points).

But if you can't trust professional advice, what can you trust? Irritatingly, John once again provided the answer. Interpol had sent Sherlock a very thoughtful present as a reward for the plutonium case: a set of their newest model of handcuffs, which they had designed to be 100% unpickable. He'd spent two contented hours trying to disprove this when John stopped by bringing an even more thoughtful present, a case. As he listened to the pallid, wounded client, Sherlock had put the cuffs and their keys into a plastic bag and tossed them in the box that held the rest of his collection, and didn't really think about John's curious scrutiny of the devices until he came back to the flat eight hours later.

The case had been brief, but mildly intriguing. The client, an unsuccessful consultant chemical engineer, had been hired to shake down a new instrument on a production line that would produce… some hypothetically useful vitamin supplement, he couldn't be arsed to remember what… out of sunflower seed oil. It turned out that, in fact, the new instrument was key to the synthesis of _mephedrone_ and the unsuccessful chemical engineer was lucky to have escaped with even one of his thumbs.

And when Sherlock came back, he sorted through his collection of handcuffs and found that as he'd suspected, John had stolen one of the pairs. Not the Interpol ones, which were bulky and threatening looking. Just the Scotland Yard standard issue double locks. It wasn't a problem… he could easily replace them by picking Lestrade's pocket next time they met. But really? Exhibitionism and now bondage? He was beginning to wonder what other things he didn't know about the Watsons.

For want of anything better, he tried it out for himself, carrying one of his older sets to Molly's flat the next time he visited. Sherlock was entirely unsurprised when Molly looked dubiously at the cuffs and said, "I don't think I'd like to be restrained." But he _was_ rather taken aback when she raised an eyebrow and said, "Buuuuuut…" And he was absolutely bloody shocked to find himself, five minutes later, stripped to the skin and cuffed to Molly's antique brass headboard.

Molly came out of her closet wearing just her knickers and carrying a large opaque plastic box which he'd never seen before. She set it on the floor just past where he could see, and rummaged about for a moment before saying "Aha!" and coming back into his line of sight carrying a squat candle in a square ceramic holder. She put the candle on the night table and lit it, filling the room with the scent of lotus blossom. Then she sat next to him, which gave him a very odd feeling. Sherlock's underbrain said that when _she_ did this _he_ should put his arm around her waist, but the handcuffs obviously prevented such an action. It produced a strange sensation of tension, which was enjoyable in a quiet sort of way.

Molly asked him, "So, you've done this sort of thing before, right? With Irene?"

"No," he replied.

"What, really?" she said, disbelievingly.

Yes, really. It had obviously been presented to him as an option on that frigid night in Karachi, given the Woman's predilections, but… well, frankly, he'd been anxious-to-the-point-of-terrified at the idea of even ordinary sex. At that point it had been more than a decade since he'd done it while sober. And even in the deepest throes of his mental fixation on Irene he'd not been nearly dim enough to put himself under her physical control. It was easier with Molly. He'd trusted her with his life, and this seemed trivial by comparison.

Molly frowned. "Right. Then we'll keep it simple. No faffing about with safe words or anything like that. If you don't like what I'm doing, just say "No" or "I don't like this" or "Quit" or whatever you like, and I'll stop. It's no fun for me if you don't have a good time too. Is that okay?"

"Why not?"

"Right," she said, and with that, she drew a bobby pin from the elaborate braided updo she'd chosen. "You told me, once, that you could get out of handcuffs with only a hairpin. Was that true?"

"These? Certainly." Happily they weren't the Interpol pair.

"Good. So we'll play a game," Molly said, in an appealing professorish voice, "You use this to try and get out of the handcuffs. If you do, you win. Or, if you want, you can ask, _politely_, "Molly, would you please let me out?" and then I win."

"How is that a game?"

"Because I'm going to do my best to distract you and_ make_ you ask. Now, shall we begin?"

With that, Molly pulled out a half-dozen more hairpins, shook out her hair (number four on the list, currently scented with orange blossom), and trailed it over his chest. Which_ was_, to be fair, _quite_ distracting. It only got worse from there. At some point (Einstein had been right about time dilation), she was doing something, he didn't know what, involving her teeth and tongue and the spot between his scrotum and thigh and he choked out a, "Molly…"

Molly sprang up from her position between his legs and straddled his pelvis. She ran her fingers over his wrists and asked, "Are these okay? Any pain or numbness or anything?"

Molly was always, _always_ kind. Which was a _stupid _thought to have about someone who was responsible for the oily lotus-blossom scented wax spattered on your chest. And for someone so allegedly kind she was, just now, carefully angling her hips away from his when he tried to rut into her. Sherlock felt like he ought to acknowledge her kindness (or criticize her temporary lack of it) but all he could manage was, "Teeth… there… nice? _Why?"_

She just smiled, "Because it is. So what do you want?"

He wanted to be uncuffed, to push back her hair to reveal her perfect pink nipples, to rip off her ridiculous skull knickers, and to fuck her into the mattress. And at the same time, he _also _wanted to see what she was going to do next. Sherlock looked up at the lock picks he'd been attempting to assemble out of her bobby pin, and observed something that looked like it had been produced by a mentally disabled ape.

He sighed. "Molly, would you please… remind me to bring my Hiatts along the next time we try this? They're easier than the Smith and Wessons."

Molly glowed when he said that. "So you'd like to do this again sometime?"

"Yes… just with the Hiatts. Much more pickable."

Molly raised an eyebrow and gave him a lovely but rather sinister smile_._ "All right. But I'm afraid that wasn't the answer I was looking for."

So she began again, and he was barely able to think that he was _grateful_ he'd never done this sort of thing with Irene Adler. Molly was only an amateur enthusiast, and that was ample. A legitimate professional in the field might actually have killed him. When she finally, _finally_ allowed him inside her, he came so hard he saw stars, and was more or less comatose when Molly unlocked the cuffs and cooed over his mildly abraded wrists.

At that moment, he was perfectly contented.

Almost.


	3. Chapter 3

So fine. _Fine._ John was better than him at saving lives. At blogging. At keeping a flat tidy. At talking to witnesses without making them cry. But Sherlock Holmes would be dipped in shit before he let John Watson, with his cheap shoes and terrible haircut, be better than him at sex. He knew what he had to do: the only reason he'd bothered getting a first in physical chemistry was that he'd made a useful enemy. You pit strength against strength, drive nails into their weak points, and then you crush them by exceeding them just in the area they think they are the master.

It really hacked him off that just when he had figured out an excellent new way to break into Watson's home and determine exactly what the man's strengths _were_ that his phone pinged with a text.

_-Oi! Dinner Sat. 6, ours. Bring yr gf, haven't seen her in yonks._

Bloody Mary and her ridiculous textspeak. Though this _would_ allow him entry to the house without any risk of being shot.

He arrived at the Watson's Maida Vale semi-detached at 6:36 that Saturday. Molly had just texted that she was going to be even later… and the Watson adults were nowhere close to having dinner ready. Sometimes it was quite pleasant to be surrounded with dysfunctional people. Especially when John, at his peak level of domesticity (the swing would begin shortly and he'd be wanting to go on a case in approximately 10-14 days) was playing the exemplary _paterfamilias_. Sherlock was greeted, set on the sofa with a large glass of excellent claret, a plate of bruschetta, and the baby, and was then abandoned so John could go hinder Mary in the kitchen.

Melita toddled up to Sherlock, presented him with a thick stack of pasteboard entitled, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and said, "Buh?"

Sherlock smiled down at her, and said, "Close. It's a boo_k_. Kkk. Buuh-kkk. The fricative is important."

Melly said "Buuh-kkk," broke into hysterical giggles, then tottered off again. This activity, "Identify the Thing" was a new and, in Sherlock's opinion, very superior game. Particularly when compared to her other favorites, "Let's find the things in this room that can are entirely innocuous but can still kill a toddler" and "Will that fit in my mouth?" It was a distinct pleasure to observe the development of a new mind out of its grub-like infant stage. Eventually, of course, he'd have to begin teaching her how to sort and discard irrelevant material, but at this point everything she learned fit under "general utility knowledge" and her retention rate was almost 100%.

He wasn't entirely clear why Melita found the process _quite_ so amusing. John said it was because she was making fun of him, but Sherlock preferred to think that it was that she simply enjoyed the acquisition of information. An additional advantage to the game was that it hardly involved much attention on the part of the adult partner. There were big gaps in the game play during which she'd toddle around, gnaw pieces of bread that he'd picked the tomatoes from, and babble incomprehensibly but fluently to him. So they played two rounds:

"KITTY!"

"No, no, I see where you're going wrong with that. You're thinking it's like dachsunds and terriers both being _dogs_. While these _are _similar-sized and fluffy, _that_ is a stuffed toy rabbit. A cat is over there," Sherlock said, pointing to Mary's enormous mog, Calton, who was sleeping and oozing over the top of his basket like an underdone Yorkshire pudding. "I can show you a real rabbit next time we go to the park."

"Wabbit! Hahahahaha!"

"Very good."

And:

"Aminal?"

"Well, these are… Christ. These are educational flashcards with captions in four languages which your parents have bought for you, before you are either literate or able to understand more than a few words of your _native _language, in an attempt to instill you with the sort of dull middle-class version of excellence which is so difficult for either of them to attain."

"Sherlock…" Mary's voice floated from the kitchen, "They were a _present_ and she loves them. Be nice."

"But they are in fact of animals. Well done."

While simultaneously Sherlock combed the living room, found Mary's mobile, cracked the unlock code on his second attempt (Really, their wedding anniversary? No wonder she'd quit intelligence work, it clearly didn't come naturally…) and began searching through her apps and files. He found what he was after in an app whose logo was a vivid fuchsia flower, and his brow furrowed. This was _not_ the answer he'd been expecting.

When John came back into the living area and began to set the dining table, Sherlock inquired, "Do you and Mary really have sex an average of eight times a week?"

"What," replied John.

The clatter in the kitchen stopped abruptly, and Mary came in, a small tornado of blonde and wrath. "Is that… that is _my_ phone!" She snatched it from Sherlock's hand and said, "This is _massively_ inappropriate."

Sherlock looked up at her and batted his eyes. "Oh dear. Is it as bad as shooting someone in the chest?"

Mary stared at him and took two deep breaths. "Fine. No, it's not. But that line isn't going to work forever."

"Do let me know when it stops. Anyway. Eight? Really?"

"Mary, why is that sort of thing even on your phone?" John asked, setting the flatware down with excessive care.

"Given that it's in an application which also records her basal body temperature and the consistency of her cervical mucus, and she began using it about the time you began complaining incessantly about the high cost of primary private education, it's obviously in aid of your attempts to conceive a second child. Do keep up."

"Oh, God, kill me," Mary said, flopping onto a chair and burying her face in her hands.

John looked at Mary. "I didn't think we were actually _trying_. Just… not avoiding, as such."

"Well, this is what 'not avoiding' looks like, _apparently_," Mary said, her voice muffled, "I'm obviously not trying to increase the odds by timing it or anything. I just… wanted to be the first one to find out, this time. And now Sherlock Holmes knows about the state of my cervix."

"_Anyway,"_ Sherlock stressed, trying to get the Watsons back on point, "Really eight times a week? And that's _with _taking four days off every month during her periods, which seems- a bit squeamish, for a doctor."

"I am_ not_ squeamish, she finds it painf- wait, no, you know what? No. I am not having this conversation with you, Sherlock. Not at all, and _especially _not in front of the baby."

"Really, John, it's harmless. She doesn't understand."

It was rather unfortunate that Melly chose that moment to look up from her flashcards and ask, "Dah-dee sex?"

It was _very_ unfortunate that she then said, quite clearly, with a wide smile, "Eight!"

The horrid little _traitor_.

Molly came down the street just in time to see the door to the Watson's house slamming open, an emerging John flinging a wadded-up greatcoat at Sherlock's head, and the door slamming shut again.

She came up to him on the front walk as he shrugged into his coat and asked him, quietly, "Did you, um, _say_ something?"

"I really really did."

"Oh, damn. I'm _starving,_ too."

"I imagine Mary'd probably feed _you_. Once she stops laughing."

Molly pulled out her mobile, sent a text, deposited her bottle of wine next to the Watson's front door, and said, "Nah. I'm mostly here for the Sherlock."

"I could_ buy_ you dinner, if you'd like to do that?"

Molly smiled up at him, and for fuck's sake how did that short-circuit so many important systems?

"Do you know?" she inquired, "That that's the first time you've actually asked me on a proper date?"

"Isn't."

"Yes it is."

"No, it _isn't_. I asked you on a date ages ago, which was nervewracking and deeply unpleasant for me to have to do. And you completely blew me off just because you were engaged to someone else."

"Wait, is _that_ what the thing with the fish and chips was? I'd sort of thought… but then… good _grief_. We do get everything backwards, don't we?"

"But we mostly figure it all out. Eventually."

For example, he had just recently developed the hypothesis that it wasn't so much the variety as it was the _quantity._ Now to test. In terms of selecting a number, well… Watsons were hardly newlyweds, after all, and the point was to _win_. So Sherlock decided that he'd begin with fourteen a week, and then reevaluate as time went by.

* * *

><p>Sacrifices had to be made, of course. Sherlock very quickly discovered that having that much sex obliged him to eat at least two meals every day, to sleep regularly, and to stop smoking and go back on the patch. A bit later on, he started going back to his club and boxing again… while each individual encounter didn't involve a significant caloric burn (he'd checked, with a Fitbit), they were surprisingly tiring and he'd have to get into better physical condition.<p>

His cab fare expenditures became exorbitant. It would be much cheaper and more efficient to simply move Molly into Baker Street, but she was currently declining even to visit until he'd cleaned the place properly. Sadly, all of the other women in Sherlock's life had apparently joined in a strike with Mrs. Hudson and were declining to provide what Hudders referred to as "Unpaid and unappreciated domestic services."

But it _worked_. Molly, on a diet of two to four orgasms a day, was _happy_. She tended to wander around in a peaceable haze, and he'd even caught her humming "Strangers in the Night" while conducting an autopsy on a Jane Doe who had been recovered after at least two weeks in the Thames.

Lestrade had caught that bit too, and had just shaken his head, saying "The pair of you."

And then, _then_, it all came crashing down. He'd been on a case, of course, nothing particularly good, and had, at the finish, come across a trainee knife-fighter. Sherlock had pulled far enough back from the random, incorrectly thought out slash to avoid any major injuries, but he'd gotten a fairly deep cut that scored across his sternum and fourth through seventh ribs.

From a pragmatical point of view, John would have been the better one to call on for suturing. He dealt with live patients, after all. But the injury was incurred well after midnight and John had gotten tetchy about his sleep time since the birth of Melita. He was entirely capable now of triaging Sherlock, determining that he was unlikely to die, summoning a mini-cab, and dispatching him to the A&E with a cheery wave good-bye.

Molly was _not_ capable of such vile behavior. And so she worried, she stitched him up, bandaged him, and tucked him into her bed. At that point, he realized it had been more than sixteen hours since he'd provided his sexual services, so he propped himself up on one elbow and began to get on with it. Or he tried, anyway. Somehow, it wasn't really… happening. And none of the usual things that made it work were working: the touch of Molly's lips on his, the weight of her small breast fitting smoothly into the curve of his palm, nothing.

He gritted his teeth and tried some more esoteric items from the collection. That thing Molly had done a few weeks ago with the ice cubes and hot tea. The vivid crimson flash of Irene Adler's lips. _Really interesting _locked-room murders he had encountered. All usually extremely solid material and still nothing in comparison to the excessive comfort levels of Molly's bed and the fact that his ribs really hurt quite a lot. It was just another example of the terrible injustice he faced on a daily basis: even when he was attempting to be a generous and giving lover, focused entirely on her pleasure, he was still going to be expected to have at least a salutary erection. _Even when _he'd just recently lost probably half a pint of blood.

Also her cat was staring at him, like a vulture, waiting for him to either die or go away so it could get back into the bed.

It became clear to him that it was no-go, and before Molly's clever fingers, currently resting on the small of his back, could discover the same, he said, "I don't think we should have sex tonight."

Molly smiled against his mouth and said, "Oh thank _God."_

And then her eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth. He arched an eyebrow, and as always she rushed to fill in an empty conversational space. "It's not that I don't like it, I mean, obviously I do. But I'm still kind of sore from this morning in the shower… or, yesterday morning, I guess. And I have to get up and go to work in three hours. You've been… just really affectionate lately. It's, I, I, I, just worry sometimes that I can't keep up with you."

Sherlock leaned back on his elbows and looked at her. She was bright pink and miserable looking and somehow he'd made her stammer, a symptom of nervousness around him which he thought she'd successfully discarded months ago. And he said, with absolute confidence, "This is never going to work, is it?"

"NO!" said Molly, "_No!_ I am totally willing and interested. Why would you say that?"

"Molly," he replied, with excessive patience, "You're being asinine."

"Oh. Am I," she answered. The flat tone soothed him. "Angry" was always better than "sad."

"I avoided having a sex life, more or less successfully, for nine years. Does that really seem like I'm a man driven by his insatiable desire to get laid as much as he possibly can?"

"W-w-w-w- well… I don't know, do I? Maybe you were saving it up, Mister "Seven times a night in Baker Street.""

"Imaginary sex made up to annoy me _does not count_."

"WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

They both took a deep breath.

"Right," said Molly, "So… if you don't want to have that much sex, why exactly have you been initiating it?"

"Ah. Well," and he related his story. Molly listened, patiently, her hands folded in her lap, and only interrupted once to say, "Really? Eight a week? With full-time jobs and a toddler?"

"And he's older than I am, too. Isn't it disgusting?"

"Well – no. But go on."

So he did, and concluded with, "And so, you see, Molly, while I certainly don't _want_ to make you unhappy it's more or less inevitable. I have no bloody idea what I'm doing and when I try to find out, as you've seen, it simply doesn't work."

"Chuh. You're starting from an erroneous given. Of course you're not going to get valid results."

Why was she smiling? "Which given is incorrect?"

"Well, Mary, though a _lovely_ person in many ways, _did_ actually used to kill people for money. She also looked at all the eligible men in England and said "Yes, I shall have the shouty hobbit." We're quite… different people. So just because she's apparently also a nymphomaniac that doesn't mean that you can extrapolate that I'm one too. Why didn't you just ask me what I want? I'd have told you."

"You didn't tell me you don't want to have sex as much as we have been."

Molly scrunched her face up. "Okay, that's actually a very valid point. And in future I'll be more, open. I guess? About what I want."

"Which is?"

She flopped back onto the pillows, "I want you to think about me and _try _to make me happy, even if you don't get it exactly right. Which you have _actually_ been doing with this whole sex thing. And your app that reminds you to say something nice to me."

Ah. "You know about that, then."

"Well, yeah. I'm not stupid. It's _fine_. In an ideal world I suppose you'd say those things out of spontaneous emotion but we live in the real world."

He sighed, "Where I'm not good at these things."

"No, where you're a _man_. All of you are crap at that sort of thing. I've got no idea what _sort_ of man you're becoming but I'm very keen to find out. So are you… calmed down, now? Because, again, work in three hours."

In response, he pressed a kiss to her temple, switched off the lamp, and gingerly (so as not to pull his new stitches) put his arm about her shoulder. Molly snuggled carefully into him, and that, as they say, was that.

* * *

><p>Until about half an hour later, when he had to inquire, "Molly?"<p>

"Mmm."

"What _should_ we do about the sex?"

"Mmmmgh. It's a bit fun being one of the frisky couples, it's just been _excessive_. I propose we shoot for one a day. At that frequency it'll be easy to play catch up on weekends if we miss one. We'll reconvene at the end of the month and compare our notes and reevaluate."

"That's… very acceptable."

And so it was.

* * *

><p>On a frosty winter afternoon, Sherlock Holmes returned to 221B Baker Street, booted up his laptop, and found that his inbox was filled with a sixty-email long chain conversation between his mother, Mary Watson, Mrs. Hudson, and his brother's PA, Anthea. Mildly intrigued, he clicked on the most recent email, only to find a vitriolic and rather whiskey-flavored rant about Mycroft's habit of interrupting whatever important work Anthea was doing whenever he needed a spider killed in his office. The next most recent email was Mary, bitterly griping that John was evidently unable ever to put a dirty glass in the dishwasher "even when the sink (where he ALWAYS leaves it) is seriously less than six inches away from it. He just seems to think that things get washed by magic."<p>

Sherlock scanned downwards in his inbox, skimming a torrent of invective directed at all Holmes men (and at John, who seemed to have become an honorary member of the family). As he approached the older emails, the alcohol content of the text palpably diminished, and he could see a few fundamental facts.

Anthea had a list of cleaners able to cope with secrecy AND biohazards. Mummy had access to his bank accounts, an unfortunate side effect of being dead for two years which he really ought to correct at some point. Mrs. Hudson had keys to his flat. And Mary had the organizational skills to combine all these things. He looked around him, and realized that… his flat was clean. _Very _clean. There was a huge pending debit under the name of "A&G White Glove Housekeeping Service" in his checking account, but the place was legitimately glowing.

Sherlock scrolled down to the first email and frowned when he found that it was Mary who had ultimately cracked. He had been mentally betting on Mummy, but fortunately he hadn't told anyone else that, so it didn't count as an incorrect deduction.

So he sent a text:

-I have cleaned the flat. Would you therefore like to come over and have sex? –SH

-Or alternatively, if you want to get kinky, we can watch Downton Abbey. –SH

Five minutes later, Molly replied.

-Wow, that really is perverse and I'm sure has nothing to do with your crush on Lady Edith. I'm off work in two hours. Let's order in :) XO Molly

His housekeeper, whoever that may have been, at some point he should probably learn, had refilled his cupboards and even laid a fire in the grate. Smiling to himself, Sherlock set a match to the kindling, sent a text to the local Chinese place, and picked up his violin. It seemed like an evening for Bach… Partita Number 3, perhaps.

Everything had all worked out.

Just as he'd always, _obviously_, known that it would.


End file.
